


Dear Fellow Traveler

by cinematicara



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Antarctic Empire, Best Friends, Childhood Trauma, Dad Friend, DreamSMP - Freeform, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Friends with long history, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I just have a lot of feelings about them okay, Platonic Soulmates, Pre-Canon, it's about the found family, platonic soulmates au, sleepy bois inc - Freeform, technoblade needs a hug, ya know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29046069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinematicara/pseuds/cinematicara
Summary: Dear fellow traveler under the moonI saw you standing in the shadows and your eyes were blueYou put your hand out, opened the doorYou said, "Come with me, boy, I want to show you something more"You spoke my language and touched my limbsIt wasn't difficult to pull me from myself againAnd in our travels, we found our roadsYou held it like a mirror, showing me the life I chose.—dear fellow traveler: sea wolforA young, scarred, and broken Techno meets Phil, completely by chance, and slowly has everything he knows about himself and the world get turned on its head :)
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), Technoblade & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), irl shipping is cringe
Comments: 23
Kudos: 137





	Dear Fellow Traveler

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: update soon hopefully! sorry it's taking so long, i am currently dealing with a lot of family issues as well as a major depressive episode, but i'm working on it, slowly but surely !!
> 
> i've got techza /p eating away at my brain, but that's okay <3
> 
> big shoutout to anarchygc as always for being my inspiration, especially my brilliant beta crow lmao love you homie homeslice, thanks for reminding me how grammar works while i do 90% of my writing at 3 in the morning when my brain has already switched off.
> 
> also i said it in the tags, but warnings and tags are subject to change!
> 
> !!!ALSO ALSO!!! there's a reason i avoid using his name in this chapter, so please bear with me :) any reference to "the boy" or "the general" is about our ole boi technoblade

The first time the boy ever killed a living thing, it had been an honest to gods accident. He had been young—no older than eight or nine—and the instinct, that sudden overwhelming drive to seize a young Strider and wring its neck as it toddled by, had been utterly foreign to him. He hadn’t even been able to recognize that such thoughts were not his own.

It began as less than a whisper in the back of his mind. It was a gnawing itch—a faint, but insatiable urge to kill—and when he had brushed the feeling off, the uncomfortable tingling in the back of his skull had only grown stronger and more aggravated, quickly blossoming from a mere feeling into an actual alien voice that seemed to reach into the crevices of his mind and bite him where it would hurt most. It had shown him things and told him things he hadn’t wanted to see. It breathed a dozen sickly sweet nothings of how good he would feel after making the kill through his mind, and still he had clamped his hands over his ears and firmly told the voice to go away. But the voice was very persuasive and determined in its quest for blood; it wouldn’t be going anywhere. The cold tongue of whatever hungry monster had settled into his mind had snaked its way over his innocence and clawed its way to the forefront of his thoughts, allowing him to think of nothing else but the bitter scent of death.

And finally, he had done it. There had been no blood. Just a quick sideways jerk of his small hands as the Strider squirmed in his grasp and that had been it for him. He had ruined himself.

He had cried when he’d realized what he had done—clutching the still faintly twitching body of the young creature to his chest as he’d sobbed. And the voice had settled back into the recesses of his mind smugly, content in its satiation for the time being.

***

This only continued as he’d gotten older, in fact, it had grown worse. As the boy reached his teens, the singular hushed voice had divided into two more, then those two had split into more, and on and on until it seemed there were nearly a hundred voices in a near constant battle amongst themselves in his head. The numbers made the urges harder to ignore, and with every kill, the blood on his hands only grew darker. More permanent. 

And less alarming.

He had planned to leave his home in the Nether earlier than most of his kind ever would for fear that one day he could lose control completely and bring harm to those he cared about. He didn’t leave quickly enough though, for once the thought had occurred to him, it had been passed along to the horde of voices, and they refused to let such a fear lie dormant.

He was just thirteen when he had finally succumbed to the voices' maddening, near-constant screams for blood—his own _family's blood_ , just as he had feared. He hadn’t meant to do it, nor had he wanted to—of _course_ he hadn’t wanted to—but there were times, he noticed miserably, that the voices seemed to be more in control of him and his thoughts than he was in control of himself. 

It had been quick and painless for the both of them, but the act had still broken the boy’s spirit and heart beyond repair. There would be no going back from something like that, not ever, not as long as he lived. He'd decided very quickly that a life with loved ones, with friends, with attachments… it would never be for him. Not with the voices. Not with the constant hungry shrieking for death without mercy.

He’d left shortly after that.

  
  


***

When the entire world headed off to war with itself, the boy had wasted no time in enlisting. He was too young—sixteen to be exact—to enlist, but he was tall and stocky for his age, and had easily passed for older at the registration office.

As he had stood at the docks waiting for the ferry that would soon carry him far to the south alongside his new compatriots, he had watched, puzzled, as mothers and wives had sobbed, their men held tightly in their arms. No one wanted to fight in this war. Everyone was too attached to home and what came with it. And everyone knew they wouldn’t last long; the daily shipments of soldiers revealed as much. Even the boy could see, as he stood quietly with his hands clasped behind his back, that they were all far too young, too fresh-faced, too innocent. He only managed to check one of those boxes for himself. He was young, but he was far from innocent, far from fresh to the horrors that would come with war. Best of all, he had no attachments. He was a fighter. He was a killer. He, with the weight of the blood on his hands and his vicious and overly crowded mind, was right where he was always meant to be: a ducked head lost in a sea of counterfeit stoic-faced young men in ill-fitting uniforms, waiting to head off to war. It seemed so right to him.

***

The other men had acted friendly enough with him at first, but his unusually cold demeanor had driven them off soon enough, much to his relief. When the time to train and prepare had passed, the others entered the war with friends to die for, but the boy had succeeded so far in maintaining that one most important personal rule: no attachments, not even temporary ones. It could never be worth the risk.

On the battlefield, he was nothing short of deadly, his years of both street fighting for money and hunting for sport and sustenance offering him a distinct advantage over the others, who to him seemed as though they had practically been plucked fresh from the pram. 

It hadn’t taken long for his superior officers to take notice of the quiet boy who could go up against four men at once without even breaking a sweat. They’d pulled him into a tent one day and had proudly pronounced him a first class private. The title had meant little to the boy—he was not there to build a name for himself—but he had thanked them graciously all the same. He was the first of his company to receive such an honor.

After that, he had collected badges and promotions like it was a game, breezing his way through the ranks as the men he had arrived with were slain in droves. He felt nothing but pity as he watched them fall, shaking his head as he crossed their names from a list. _What a waste._ They had not been meant for this like he had been. 

The rule of no attachments continued to work perfectly for him. He didn’t like to lie awake at night listening to the muffled sobs of his men as they mourned their fallen brothers in arms. _If only they had been as careful as me_ , he often thought to himself. _Then they would never have to know this kind of pain._

That pain of human loss was a pain that he had always been quite content to be free of, the only attachments he held dear being to the war itself and the frozen spot of land that comprised the empire he had grown quite fond of during his deployment there. There were no people in his heart, only war and thoughts of dealing defeat to his enemies. And when the old general was slain in combat and the boy was promoted in his stead, he felt no love for the men as they clapped and whistled and shouted his fondly given nickname. “ _The Blade!”_ they chanted together. _“The Blade will lead us to victory!”_

He had smiled. But he had felt no love.

***

As the numbers of his Antarctic army began to dwindle, a new call went out to the mainland requesting more soldiers, whomever could be spared. Two years had passed since the war had first begun, meaning boys by the boatload that would have aged into enlisting. Older men had begun to be called to leave their homes to fight as well. They were close to ending the war, everyone could feel it—all they needed was that new burst of strength that would come with fresh blood. 

As the newest shipment of fresh-faced recruits arrived at the docks, the general stood quietly with his hands clasped behind his back, and carefully studied the face of every man as they disembarked the vessel, blinking against the brightness of the frozen landscape. He found himself already picking out their weakness and strengths in a quick once over as they stumbled forward. Many of them looked to be strong, as well as older, harder, and more experienced than the men he had first entered the war with. He smiled. This was a group he could work with.

There was one man in particular that stood apart from the rest to the general. The man looked strong—not in the way of a wrestler, but in the way of an athlete. He had years carved into his face—not many compared to a large portion of his new army, but years all the same. The general pinned him to be somewhere between his late twenties to early thirties. What surprised him most was the way the expression on the man’s face had not been one of fear and anxiety as the others’ had, but one of almost smug excitement mixed with… well, a degree of boredom almost, as if joining a war were just another thing to do on an otherwise average day. He had raised an amused eyebrow as he’d squinted into the harsh whiteness of the empire’s land, his long blonde hair dancing around his face in the sub-zero wind. A long black cape decorated with red markings that the general couldn’t quite make out flowed from his shoulders, an interesting choice of wardrobe for a soldier.

As the general watched from the mouth of his tent on the hill, the man paused, turning against the crowd to stop and look up at the sky as the others continued to flow around him towards the barracks. For nearly ten minutes, his gaze flicked between scanning the horizon and measuring distance with an outstretched palm and a squinted eye. He finally muttered something to himself in apparent satisfaction, nodded, and turned to enter the barracks with the other soldiers. 

The general spent the rest of the afternoon wondering what in the sky could have transfixed the man so.

***

“Lieutenant,” the general said slowly the next morning as he traced a finger along the edge of a map, not once looking up to meet his officer’s eye. “There’s a man in the new batch of trainees I’d like to meet. I’m not familiar with his name—he has long hair and wears a black cloak with red markings. Please find him and send him to my tent.” He dismissed the lieutenant who soon returned with the man in tow. Up close, the general could spot an undeniable twinkle in the man’s eye, although his expression remained blank. The general found himself liking the man despite himself.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Yes, please take a seat.” The general waved a hand at a worse-for-wear armchair in the corner of the room. “Pull that old thing over here.”

The man complied and sat, a quizzical expression on his face.

“That will be all, Lieutenant,” the general dismissed the officer standing awkwardly against the wall. The soldier snapped to attention then quickly ducked out of the tent.

“So,” the general began, drumming his fingers on the table. “I was watching you yesterday during the offload and you did something that interested me. You stopped in the crowd and watched the sky for several minutes. Why did you do that?”

The man leaned back in his seat and blew out a puff of air, shaking his head. “Instinct, I guess. The sky is my element. Whenever I arrive in a new place, I like to take note of the cloud covering, wind speed, bird population, little things like that.”

“You’re a pilot?”

At this, the man laughed, a bright and jovial sound that even nearly managed to brighten the general’s ever-dim spirits. “No, no, no. Not a pilot. I’m a flier.”

The general’s brow furrowed at the contradiction. “So, you’re a flier but not a pilot. How does that work exactly?”

“You really don’t know?” The man’s eyes widened. “Geez, kid, how old are you?”

The general ignored the invasive question. “No, I don’t know what you mean. Explain it to me.”

“Well, I can’t very well show you in here.” That twinkle in the man’s eye was back.

“Very well,” the general sighed, standing and pushing in his chair, prompting the other man to do the same. “We'll take this outside. Lead on.”

A wave of cold air struck the pair as they exited the tent, sending a shiver down the general’s spine. “Alright,” he called over the wind. “Show me what you’re talking about.”

The man simply smiled and unbuckled his cloak, letting it fall in a heap on the snow-covered ground. The general could see now that the cloak had been hiding something underneath. Whatever it was looked almost like another cloak, except for the fact it was made out of... His eyes widened as a pair of beautiful black feathered wings that spanned roughly 20 feet and shimmered almost blue in the cold sunlight spread from behind the man’s back, cutting sharply through the wind and sheets of falling snow. The general's breath caught in his throat as he took a step back to marvel at the sight.

“Gods...” he breathed, dumbstruck. He had never seen a man with wings before, nor had he heard of such a thing, having grown up in the Nether where the only creatures of any sort of flight were the irksome Ghasts.

The man smiled at the general’s astonishment before shaking the snow from the wings and tucking them back in place tightly against his back, pulling the cloak around his shoulders to shield them from the elements. 

“Ta-da! That’s my party trick,” the man said proudly as he buckled the clasp on his cloak. “There aren’t many of us left, but we’re out there. Most fliers had to amputate their wings and sell them during the depression a decade and a half ago—you would've been too young to remember, by the looks of you. The price of shedding one's wings could easily feed an entire family for a very long time, something that was desperately needed by a lot of people during that time, but lucky for me, my family wouldn’t hear of it, for which I am forever grateful.” The wings bristled beneath the cloak. “They’re a part of my identity, I don’t think I could ever bear to part with them.”

The general nodded, barely hearing a word as his brain raced along at a million miles per second. _This could be a game-changer for them._ A flying soldier? With neither the bulkiness nor the fuel expense of a flying machine? It seemed almost too good to be true.

“How fast can you fly?” he asked. “And how high? How long can you last in the air between breaks?”

“I can sustain a little more than 90 miles per hour for a short amount of time before my skin starts to sort of… shred? I’m definitely one of the faster fliers out there. Altitude limits will definitely be different out here than they are back home, but I’m able to go however high I can get without freezing to death first, and if I have water and food on me I can fly for as long as you need. Nothing too crazy though. I am still human.”

The general couldn’t help but grin at all the positive affirmations bouncing wildly around inside his head. Now _this_ was rare _._ Even the voices seemed to like this man. A soft feminine voice rose steadily above the others’ as they continued to clamor with excitement: “ _Don’t forget your rule, Blade”_ the voice advised in an almost sing-song voice. _“You’ve said it yourself from the beginning: no attachments.”_ He brushed the warning off. This wouldn’t ever get to the point of friendship; it was a partnership, and nothing more. And besides, he would be careful. The man would be useful to him, and when that usefulness had run its course—whether it be to death or the war’s end—he would easily move on and never think of him again. It would not be hard for him to remain unattached after all these years. 

He stretched out a hand to the man, who took it, and shook. “My name is Phil, by the way,” the man said. “Philza Minecraft on all the documents, but just Phil is fine.”

“Phil,” the general repeated, the slightest hint of a smile tugging on the corner of his mouth as he thought of all the great things this man would bring him with the gift of flight. “It's good to meet you. I think this could be the start of a great partnership.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> okay........so basically i have an incredibly big issue when it comes to finishing fics once i've started them, but i have a FEELING about this one. i'm trying something kinda new for me where i uhhh plan out the story before i write it, and maybe having some of that structure will help me to, ya know..,..,., write and actually finish the mfer.
> 
> anyways! drop a kudos and a comment if you enjoyed, positive reactions are 90% of the reason i'm able to ever update at all!!
> 
> aaaand as always, shameless twitter plug: @ PLGLLNS
> 
> thanks for reading! :)


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